


the blue that lasts

by coeur (orphan_account)



Category: Original Work
Genre: Emotional, Experimental, Loneliness, inspired by blade runner 2049
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-03
Updated: 2018-11-03
Packaged: 2019-08-16 19:41:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,400
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16501514
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/coeur
Summary: i live, i die - the clouds move in.





	1. FACT

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> laying the ground

 

 **They will tell you that this is a known fact** : there are two types of emotions here – negative and positive.

 

It is the third year of Epoch VII. Ownership of this society has long been transferred to what people have created, and emotions are controlled from birth. Every resident in this society is only allowed to experience happiness on their birthday each year. For the rest of the year, they will only experience negative emotions.

In the eleventh year of Epoch III, there was an insurgency against the things that people had created. A small group of students wanted to change the education system. A lot of them will tell you that the insurgency was eventually stifled, and that they have changed the education system. All the students are forced to learn only one subject which they dislike, for the rest of their schooling life.

It is the third year of Epoch VII.

So far, nothing has changed.

 


	2. MF26

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> (1) girl who breaks logic

 

MF26 is a young girl. Not quite a child anymore, but not a teenager yet.

She has been made to take Mathematics for the rest of her life, simply because she hates it. They are doing mathematics in school now. She has a graphing calculator by her side and the teacher is talking about differential equations. Her teacher is a robot with a television screen for a head.

One of students falls asleep and the teacher wakes him up. They are all looking straight ahead, eyes open, faces grey and blank. It is not possible to suspect that anybody feels that anything is wrong. They are all unhappy, and this lesson has no effect on their unhappiness.

One of the students in class has his birthday today, and he has chosen to skip school because he feels happy for once.

 

She keys in many numbers into her calculator and draws the graphs of the various equations. All the graphs look the same.

The lesson will continue for six hours straight. They cannot feel anything other than misery. But they probably do not know what it means.

 

She will walk back into class the following day, and the day after that, to draw more graphs. She has burnt through five pads of graphing paper in five days. She does not feel anything else. She continues to draw graphs.

One day she draws a graph and finds that it curves in a shape that she has seen somewhere before.

She does not know what this shape is. As best as she can describe it, the graph has one large semicircle and two diagonal lines that intersect at a point far below it. She finds the equations in her textbook and looks for a shape that might complete it. By putting together a pattern of graph shapes and adjusting the negatives and positives of the straight lines that replicate the bottom of the new graph, she comes up with this equation, which she writes out laboriously on the brittle graph paper.

 

_x(t) = 4sin(t)^3 y(t) = 3cos(t) – 1.3cos(2t) – 0.6cos(3t) – 0.2cos(4t)_

_♡_

 

She has just discovered the heart shape. She does not what it is and looks at it carefully. She shows it to her classmates, and they all look at it. It does not mean anything to them. She finds the colour option on the menu and fills it in with pink, a colour she sees only on screens.

The teacher sees her talking to her classmates and comes over.

 

[what are you doing] 

"nothing sir"

[let me see that]

 

The teacher inspects the graph and registers it as a heart shape. They will say that the symbol generates what is known as happiness in the mind of a human. These are positive emotions and should not be felt today, because it is not her birthday.

But these are graphs that have been arranged to fall into line, to fall into this pattern. Graphs will be graphs, and nothing more. Some think that they are harmless. 

The teacher returns it to her and tells her to erase it immediately.

 

She discovers more shapes – geometries and parabolas, designs, things that look like people. She feels something strange rising inside her, a feeling she has not felt in a long time. She thinks of more, and she finds that she is able to think of more. This is what they do not tell you. 

She still draws graphs, but her graphs are different from the other graphs that they tell her to draw. She feels strange on every day of the week. And it is not her birthday on any of these days. The machines do not register this as a problem.

She disguises it as a mathematical graph, but these graphical drawings have given her something to feel for, a door to open in her mind, where almost everything has been locked except the ability to feel pain and live with it.

The calculator is not her best friend. Neither is the graphing pad or her own mind. It seems very strange, she thinks, that she should have this to herself. Nobody else wants to know it.

But this is the message that she keeps getting on her screen nowadays. She notes the simple fact that none of the graphs she wants to draw now lie within the boundaries of mathematical possibility.

The same message, repeated over and over again.

**MATH ERROR: UNDEFINED**

 


	3. PT08

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> (1) secondhand elderly who reaches the end of the sea

 

PT08 is walking along the side of the street on the other side of the society. He has white hair and a wrinkled face that droops with sadness. He has experienced 27375 days of sadness, of which 75 are happy days. He is 157 days into this year, and his 76th day of happiness is tomorrow.

He feels tired today. He does not know why. Tiredness is not an emotion he is used to feeling. Often, he feels angry. But he is not sure.

He has never been sure.

He is going back home after spending a day at the market, buying food. He does not know how to select his food. The machines at the store sort everything out for him.

The streets are grey and the sky is blue. These are the only two colours they know, apart from the ones that they see on digital screens.

He is very, very tired. He must get home quickly. He remembers nothing much of his life. He has always known the feeling of unhappiness. He does not feel anything else, because if he does not know prolonged happiness, he cannot long for it.

There is nothing that changes him. There is nothing that he has changed.

 

He is finally back home. He sits down on an armchair. The feeling of unhappiness does not go away. Sitting down helps to turn his tiredness into sadness. The default state of everything here, they will tell you, is sadness.

And that is why the machines make them shed tears every night.

 

Everybody here knows what short-lived happiness is. It feels wonderful. And it is the only thing that is preventing them from turning into one of the things that people have created. It is - momentary, and it is very soon replaced by the old sense of sadness again. 

For a lot of people the feeling becomes something that they can enjoy but learn to fear as well. The concept is new, unknown, not understood. It feels distant, like a childhood memory that has been washed and peeled away from the years of other experiences. People are careful with it, and they learn to approach it delicately each year as the years add on to their lives. 

 

He falls asleep. Nightfall arrives. The morning passes and goes. There are only two ways of getting out of the blue that lasts -

Momentarily, on your birthday every year, or

Permanently, when it’s finally time to go.

 

For PT08,

It was both.

 

In a small yard that is perfectly square from years of calculation and the work of machinery, there are neat rows of stones. Each stone bears the same inscription as the other, differing only by the identification numbers they are given from birth. They all look the same in the end.

 

But the world will have

something to remember him by,

for there on the stone,

_which happened to belong to PT08_

were the neatly etched words -

 

**I WAS SOMEONE.**

 


End file.
